VacationSelector

Florence or La Spezia?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Florence
✓ Best match
55
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage with your weighting.

La Spezia
43
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

The verdict

Choose Florence if you want museums and a centre where the notable places are within walking distance of one another, plus the wider choice of restaurants and bars for the evening.

Choose La Spezia if the trip is built around swimming: 32 beaches nearby and sea above 21°C for four months of the year, with more protected land around it for walking.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

FlorenceLa Spezia
Beaches & swimming. La Spezia leads by 73 points.73
FlorenceLa Spezia
Score073
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km032
Coast distance78 km0 km
Water distance—0 km
Places to eat. Florence leads by 28 points.28
FlorenceLa Spezia
Score5931
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,299235
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1511
Museums & heritage. Florence leads by 40 points.40
FlorenceLa Spezia
Score8242
Museums within 10 km13215
Museums within 2 km of centre9310
Share of museums within 2 km %7067
Unesco sites within 50 km42
Nightlife. Florence leads by 32 points.32
FlorenceLa Spezia
Score5624
Drinking venues within 4 km818208
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre599176
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7385
Nightclubs within 4 km341
Nature & day trips. La Spezia leads by 14 points.14
FlorenceLa Spezia
Score3852
Protected land share 50 km %913
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %10051
Park area within 2 km86 hectares23 hectares
Good for families. Florence leads by 32 points.32
FlorenceLa Spezia
Score5220
Tourist attractions within 2 km303
Park area within 2 km86 hectares23 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km02
Sights concentration. Florence leads by 68 points.68
FlorenceLa Spezia
Score757
Notable places within 2 km2926
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Florence and La Spezia are level on 68.
FlorenceLa Spezia
Score6868
Price level global64.964.9
Daily budget€155€155
Year-round weather. La Spezia leads by 2 points.2
FlorenceLa Spezia
Score6870
Monthly daytime high10.8 °C to 32.7 °C11.4 °C to 30.3 °C
Monthly rainfall32 mm to 132 mm32 mm to 132 mm
Dry months22
0255075100

Where they differ

Florence has many times as many notable places within walking distance of the centre, so days work on foot. It has many times as many museums as La Spezia, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 2.

La Spezia answers with the coast: 32 beaches nearby where Florence has none, and four months when the sea sits at 21°C or more, reaching 25°C in August. Its notable places are scattered rather than clustered, so days lean on the water rather than a walkable centre.

Where they are alike

Both sit under the same weather: January highs of 11°C in each, the same 2360 hours of sunshine a year, and rainfall that matches month for month, driest in midsummer and heaviest in late autumn.

They also line up on days out beyond the centre: both have protected country and UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, with 13% of the land around La Spezia protected against 9% around Florence, while Florence holds more park space near the centre.

Which traveller are you?

Anyone travelling for museums and old streets should take Florence: many times as many museums as La Spezia, 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and notable places clustered tightly enough to walk between.

A traveller who wants to swim daily should take La Spezia: 32 beaches nearby, sea reaching 25°C in August, and more of the surrounding land protected for walking on days off the sand.

Families are pulled both ways. Florence has far more attractions and park space near the centre; La Spezia has two theme parks within reach and the beaches. With young children the coast is the simpler trip.

What the numbers don't tell you

The value comparison between these two carries no information. It is a national price level, identical for both by construction, and the €155 a day beside it is one national estimate rather than anything measured in either city. Neither is the cheaper trip on this evidence.

La Spezia's coast is a summer asset only: the sea passes 21°C only in the warm half of the year, and those are the months when the beaches are busiest. Florence's driest months, July and August, are also its hottest at 33°C, so the clearest weather comes with the hardest midday heat.

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Florence
11
12
16
20
24
29
32
33
27
22
16
11
La Spezia
11
13
16
18
23
27
30
30
26
21
16
12
Sea temperature, °C
Florence
No coastline within reach
La Spezia
14
13
14
15
18
22
24
25
23
20
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Florence
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
La Spezia
68
58
59
65
63
41
32
35
102
125
132
95
Daylight, hours per day
Florence
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
La Spezia
9
10
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Florence
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3
La Spezia
4
4
6
6
8
9
11
10
7
5
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Florence: 1995-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Firenze / Peretola (5.6 km from centre). La Spezia: 1991-2020 normals, Pisa / S. Giusto (64.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Florence is at its best in May and June, with highs of 24-29°C and rain still light. July and August are the driest months at 32-35mm, but 32-33°C makes the middle of the day hard work.

La Spezia's window is June to September, when the sea runs 22-25°C and highs stay at 26-30°C, easier than Florence inland. September still swims well, though rain jumps to 102mm; October and November are wetter still, at 125-132mm in both cities.

Getting there

Flying fromFlorenceLa Spezia
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 5 m
€180-199
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
2 h 5 m
€48-62
PSA · 65 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€143-159
FLR · 6 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
TiranaTIA
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
RomeFCO, CIA
55 m
€136-139
1 stop
FLR · 6 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
GOA · 86 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 55 m
€232-255
2 stops
FLR · 6 km
1 h 55 m
€210-262
1 stop
PSA · 65 km
CataniaCTA
1 h 35 m
€135-156
FLR · 6 km
1 h 35 m
€55-66
PSA · 65 km
PalermoPMO
1 h 25 m
no fares
FLR · 6 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
BariBRI
1 h 20 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
BrindisiBDS
1 h 30 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km
MarrakechRAK
3 h 10 m
no fares
PSA · 70 km
3 h 10 m
no fares
PSA · 65 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-09 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureFlorenceLa Spezia
Official languageItalianItalian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCFL230 V, 50 HzCFL230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation50 m3 m
Main airportFlorence Airport, Peretola (FLR)6 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsPisa International Airport (PSA)65 km from centre81 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureFlorenceLa Spezia
City population360,93092,119
People per km²3,5281,792
Museums within 10 km14012
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km42
Distinct cuisines in the centre6222
Swim season, months above 21 °C–4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Florence or La Spezia somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.